Filament (e.g., incandescent) and high-intensity discharge (HID) light sources are commonly used on many vehicles, such as head lights and fog lights. As may be appreciated, filament light and HID light sources emit light in an approximately spherical light distribution. Many filament and HID lights use a moveable baffle to produce the required light/dark cutoff of a low-beam light pattern, and are usually angled downward and slightly away from oncoming traffic, in order to reduce glare for oncoming vehicles on the opposite side of the road. One example of a moveable baffle is described in U.S. Pat. Pub. 2009/0052200 (Tessnow). Unfortunately, some light emitted from the filament or HID light source strikes the baffle and is wasted, thereby reducing the overall efficiency and output of the filament or HID light design.
While other vehicle light designs exist that produce a low-beam pattern without the use of a moveable baffle, such as for example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,894,257 (Rice and Tessnow), these known vehicle light designs are used with a solid state light source such as a light-emitting diode (LED) light source that emits light within a hemispherical extent; this arrangement would be unsuitable to receive light from a filament lamp that emits light in a generally spherical distribution.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a filament and/or HID light source configuration of vehicle light that produces a low-beam light pattern using a light source that emits light in an approximately spherical light distribution, but lacks moving parts and increases the overall efficiency and output.